Stories I don't expect to see...
TORIES SAVED FROM BANKRUPTCY BY LABOUR's SURGING ECONOMYImagine if they'd sold in 1994. Or if the property crash that Tory economy spokesmen have predicted each year for the last ten years had actually happened.
No need to thank us.
MINISTER STATES OBVIOUS;
JOURNALISTS WILFULLY MISINTERPRETIt's so fucking obvious what Miliband was saying that I can barely bother to explain it. HE WAS SAYING THAT PRIME MINISTERS GET UNPOPULAR, AND THAT PEOPLE LIKE WHAT THEY CAN'T HAVE. Furthermore, I am willing to bet that it will be less than four weeks after the take over of Gordon Brown that a major newspaper runs a story on how rubbish Gordon Brown is compared to Tony Blair. This is not because Gordon Brown is crap, but because the Media are like small, spoilt children, easily bored, never satisfied and demanding continual attention. They're also in need of a good spanking, but enough about the foibles of certain Tory columnists.
The Art of the Column... and the Guardian today.
As I said yesterday, I have a lot of sympathy with Polly Toynbee's
recent speech on the art of the column.
To reduce it down, her argument is that writing a good political newspaper column requires some journalistic skill and a mental sympathy with the aims of politicians. It also requires introducing new information, facts that are new to the reader and a central thesis that is in some way mind opening and thoughtful.
Secondly, she argues that the approach of many writers, specifically in the right wing press, is just to engage in an angry rant, which merely confirms the prejudices of the reader.
Finally, she argues that the internet commentators are driving this rush to the extreme. She says:
"There is a skill in crafting a column with a beginning, a middle and an end, a coherent argument and at least three facts readers don't know, preferably information gleaned from talking to the leading players in the case.
"There is a risk that the style of the blogosphere is dragging us all along to shout louder. It may be that the short burst of opinion is all anyone can absorb and the longer column becomes too much of a time-investment.
"A number of us columnists are anxious about it because it is a different style. It's not crafted, you haven't had the time to ring someone up, they want it now. There's a danger that it becomes more opinionated."
I agree. The trouble is that the biggest outbursts of outraged ranting and ill researched nonsense tends not to come from the small audience lunatics like me, but from blinkered idealogues given space in the Guardian and the biggest source of ill informed gossip and speculation as central fact are the TV news channels.
Whether it's Andrew Murray, the always reliably barmy A L Kennedy, or today's effort from Geooffrey Wheatcroft, the Guardian has done more to promote ranting than any number of blogs. And whether it's Natasha Kaplinsky, Andrew Neill or Kay Burley, the TV news channels have done more to promote superficiality and scandal as the currency of news than any number of spittle flecked bloggers like Guido Fawkes.
For example, let's tke today's
Geoffrey Wheatcroft article. The thesis appears to be: Blair is unspeakable, Brown is worse and less charismatic and Peter Hain. In it he gets the following wrong.
a) He claims the quote about "a second rate intellect, but a first rate temprament" was uttered by Roy Jenkins about Tony Blair, when it was said of Franklin Delano Roosevelt by Oliver Wendell Holmes (and borrowed by Jenkins).
b) Claims George Osborne called Gordon Brown Autistic, which he didn't.
c) Claimed Alistair Campbell called Gordon Brown psychologically flawed, which he didn't.
He then uses these non-facts to build a case that Brown is inept, and goes on to berate him for supporting the Iraq war.
However, Wheatcroft needs for his thesis to say that Brown is even worse than Blair. So he claims with not a single, solitary shred of evidence, that Brown didn't _really_ support the war, but only supported it out of a flawed politcal calculus and that therefore his support is worse than Blair's who at least was a true believer. Does he provide any evidence for this claim? No, because he can't. He just asserts it as fact.
So the whole article is made up of factually wrong assertions designed to support a thesis which has no evidence to support it.
This is not an article, it is pap, doing nothing but stroking the outrage of those who share the prejudices of the writer.
Polly, please direct your ire to your own editor.
Polly Toynbee and sympathy for the devils...
Polly Toynbee made an interesting speech about newspaper columns, blogging and journalism the other day. The speech (which doesn't seem to be online), is rather perceptive and interesting, and I'll have more to say about it later today.
You can read a
reasonable summary of it here.
"People say: ‘What's the difference between a blog and column anyway? Isn't MySpace just as good as the Guardian comment pages?' I think not. There is a skill in crafting a column with a beginning, a middle and an end, a coherent argument and at least three facts readers don't know, preferably information gleaned from talking to the leading players in the case.
"There is a risk that the style of the blogosphere is dragging us all along to shout louder. It may be that the short burst of opinion is all anyone can absorb and the longer column becomes too much of a time-investment.
"A number of us columnists are anxious about it because it is a different style. It's not crafted, you haven't had the time to ring someone up, they want it now. There's a danger that it becomes more opinionated."Also, you might not check your facts, on a blog, which would make you look like a right tool,. not that I'd ever do such a thing oh no. *cough, cough*.
Jon Cruddas is NOT going to screw up today. (and I am a moron)
Ignore the post below, I'm an idiot and the _Sunday_ times is a very inaccurate newspaper.
See the comments for details. Goes to show what happens if you don't read the Sunday papers!
According to the Times, Jon Cruddas will call for the PM to step down today during an appearance on the Daily Politics. I hope it isn't true or that he rethinks by noon.
"Jon Cruddas, a contender for the Labour deputy leadership, in his appearance today on BBC1’s The Politics Show, will call on Blair to step down."
If that report is true, I'll lose much of the remaining respect I (and I suspect many others) had for him. This is a totally boneheaded move. Why?
1. It plays straight into the Tories hands. Cameron calls for the PM to go, nothing happens for a week, he looks stupid, then Bloody Jon Cruddas backs him up. Thanks. A lot.
2. It comes on a day when Labour's poll ratings improved.
3. It re-inforces the impression that the Cruddas campaign has gone into full leftie bandwagon mode. Trident, Iraq withdrawal, dep leadership candidates should all resign, and now this. It'll get him some support in the activist base, but at what cost to his reputation as a responsible politician?
4. People inside the party don't want the PM to go for very good tactical reasons, (May elections, dealing with a number of short term issues, and to give the Chancellor a lift across June/July/August and to be fresh in time for Party conferences.)
5. Just from his own personal perspective, it gives a number of the other deputy leadership candidates a handy stick to beat him with- disloyalty. The other centre-left deputy leadership candidates have been hamstrung in attacking Cruddas on most issues, but they can do this.
So, if he does this, Cruddas moves to the very bottom of my preference ranking for the Deputy leadership, for all four of my leadership votes (Party, Union and two Afiliated associatons.)
A miserable failure...
Yesterday I tried to live a life without the news media. I refused to read newspapers (except for a sports section I found on the tube). I made a conscious effort to turn over the TV if the news was coming up.
In other words, I spent my Sunday as millions of people in Britain do. I read books, played computer games on my enormous new TV and had an excellent confit belly of pork. As a result of the latter i have to go to the gym now.
It was interesting to see how much news you pick up inadvertently. Whether it's other peoples papers on the tube, the guy in front of you on the bus reading the Observer or walking into a shop for a bottle of coke. You find out quite a lot about the world without making any particular effort to do so.
Of course, I cracked. At about 11pm I logged onto the BBC news website, "just in case I'd missed something really important". I hadn't, obviously, but I'd have hated to turn up to work today and discovered that the PM had resigned without me noticing.
I enjoyed it, and will be embracing no-news Sundays more frequently in future.
